The beta for Battlefield Hardline has finally arrived. It is an open beta and your chance to kick the tires prior to the release of Hardline in March.

You can play the beta on everything, including the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC. (The only thing you can't play it on is the Wii U and a version was never planned for that console.)

In our short time looking at the Hardline beta it is good to see that Viscereal took the comments from the Alpha to heart and has crafted the fastest Battlefield ever. It looks good and plays good. In some ways it still feels like a Battlefield game and in other ways it does not.

The short five day run for the beta is perhaps the most disappointing. For those that have jobs it is going to be hard to get in all of the Hardline play possible before the beta ends.

Whispers over the weekend have revealed that it would seem very likely that the Battlefield Hardline Beta will start on February 3rd according to an Email that was leaked.

The timing seems right given the recent Hardline updates. Speaking of updates we should know if it is correct Wednesday when This Season on Hardline airs.

The Beta for Battlefield Hardline is quite a big deal for both publisher Electronic Arts and developer Viscreal Games. With the delays and retooling of the project, EA has a lot riding on trying to establish Hardline as an additional Battlefield franchise from which to develop from. This beta should give EA and Viscreal if the retooled Hardline based on feedback from the Alpha testers is the game that people actually want to play.

The beta this time around will be coming to Xbox which was different from the alpha which was restricted to PlayStation and PC. Early previews and screenshots seem to show quite a different game and play from what we first saw. Still it does seem to have quite a bit to keep players engaged. We will see.

While we still have no hard start date for the next Beta for Battlefield Hardline, we are starting to know more about what will be include in the next beta. The beta is coming on all five platforms, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC.

Developer Visceral has confirmed that there will be no level cap and the beta will allow you to progress through the game’s upgrades as far as you can. The beta will include two maps with one being a downtown setting and the other featuring a desert setting. The beta will offer two modes of game play.

The Conquest mode will return in the beta with 64-player cops and criminals. The Hotwire mode looks to be centered around vehicles.

Visceral is hoping that testers will really give the beta a proper outing. They hope that any additional data that they gain from the test will make the game stronger and more stable prior to release.

Visceral has announced that they will be dropping new info each week on Battlefield Hardline till release.

Fans can tune-in each Wednesday till launch where they can find out more of the behind the scenes of the development of Hardline as well as details about game modes, weapons, and all things Hardline.

Next week Visceral has teased that they will reveal more about the upcoming Beta test for Hardline. From what we understand, unlike the first testing of Hardline, the beta test this time will be available for all platforms. Last time around access was limited only to PlayStation 4 and PC.

Hardline is planned for release on March 17th in North America on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC. It is planned for release in Europe on March 20th. These are the new confirmed release dates that were announced after Visceral went back to the drawing board after hearing feedback from the PlayStation 4 and PC testing. Battlefield Hardline was originally scheduled to be released in October of last year. Visceral believes the additional time has given them the ability to address feedback and build the game that players want to play.

The next Battlefield title after the release of Hardline will be a military-themed title was the word for Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen. While he did not confirm if the new Battlefield title would be called Battlefield 5, he said that it would be a return to a military-style Battleifled game and it will be a fun new Battlefield.

Speaking at the 2014 UBS Global Technology Conference, Jorgensen’s comments are some of the first regarding the next Battlefield offering. While not confirmed, it is thought that Hardline which was supposed to be a 2014 release, is now scheduled to arrive in March.

Star Wars Battlefront (3) which is also in development by Battlefield developer DICE is likely a late 2015 holiday release to tie in with the new Star Wars film. With this confirmation, it would seem that Battlefield 5 (At least that is what we are calling it right now) will be a fall or holiday 2016 offering. With this longer development cycle we have to think that DICE should be able to avoid some of the teething problems that it experienced with the release of Battlefield 4.

The introduction of Battlefield: Hardline this year does not mean that EA is planning to annualize the Battlefield franchise for releases every year. “It doesn’t mean that we need to annualize Battlefield and that is the way it is going to be forever and ever”, says Patrick Soderlund to Polygon.

Having more than one Battlefield game does have benefits. Everything we fixed with Battlefield 4 is going into the release of Hardline, according to Soderlund. The latest netcode patch will fix the complaints around Battlefield’s game responsiveness.

Rumors of a new entry in the Battlefield franchise developed by Visceral Games has panned out to be true. A new SWAT police style shooter has been in development by the studio best known for the Dead Space franchise.

Battlefield: Hardline was spotted by fans inside the code of the latest Battlelog update. The game is expected to be released later this year for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC. It is powered by the Frostbite 2 engine we suspect.

The game has been in development at Visceral under the codename of “Ohama” and it will be shown at E3 in June. The game will have four factions which are SWAT, Thieves, LW, and CR and offer four classes said to be enforcer, Mechanic, Operator, and Professional. The game is expected to offer at least four modes of game play said to be Heist, Blood Money, TDM, and Turf War.

Beyond this, little else is known about Hardline, but we think this is likely the unnamed title that EA was talking about earlier this year that was on track for release yet this year with a fall release likely. Hard to say what Battlefield fans will make of Hardline and we will have to wait till E3 to get a real look at how well this works and if it is the kind of think Battlefield fans who are used to military shooters, will have interest in playing.

Electronic Arts is talking tough about the class action lawsuit over Battlefield 4 that has been filed. The company claims that they will aggressively defend the meritless allegations and have even gone as far as to predict that the court will dismiss the complaint in due course.

Without getting into all of the details, the suit alleges that EA failed to disclose and misrepresented adverse facts about Battlefield 4 that were known by the company prior to the launch of Battlefield 4. The suit claims that Battlefield 4 was bug ridden and had a number of other problems. In addition the suit claims that EA executives sold EA stock at artificially inflated prices due in part to positive comments made about Battlefield 4 earlier in the year.

While there is no doubt that Battlefield 4 has had its problems and a rocky launch to say the least, it still isn’t clear how much anyone knew about the situation with the game before it was released. DICE has continued to work non-stop releasing patches and fixing bugs on all of the Battlefield 4 platforms and things have gotten better. It is still hard to say however how much impact all of the negative talk has impacted sales as EA has not released sales numbers for the game yet as we don’t know what the sales of the next-generation versions of the game have done. Some are claiming that sales of Battlefield 4 are down 69% over the sales of Battlefield 3 however.

Over the past several weeks, something we have been hearing about for a long time seems to be rising from the “no comments” we have been hearing. Rumors of a new Battlefield spin-off title have been rumored for a while now, but only after Wedbush analyst Michael Patcher talked about it in his December 5th Wedbush Securities Update, has it begun again to finally get some traction.

Based on a number of rumors that we have heard, coupled with the info from Patcher, it does seem likely that since we know that we are not going to see a Medal of Honor title in 2014, that something else is brewing till Battlefield 5 arrives in 2015. (EA’s original plan was to see Battlefield and Medal of Honor to alternate release years.)

From what we have been able to ferret out from the rumors, a new Battlefield spin-off title is in development. So far EA and DICE have been quiet and have had no comment on the possible existence of such a title. While rumors of a Battlefield 2143 and Battlefield Bad Company sequel have made the rounds several times, DICE has put an end to those rumors quickly, but have hinted that they would like to revisit both.

So while we don’t know what kind of Battlefield game it would be breaking off from the main franchise, we have a bit of better luck knowing where the primary development might be taking place. Originally it was rumored that remaining team at Criterion Games, who are thought to be working under the banner Criterion Zero could be working on such a project, but now it would seem that Patcher thinks it could be none other than Visceral that is doing the work on it instead and that would seem to fit better as to what might be happening if this is the direction that EA is heading.

Ritche Corpus, Director of ISV gaming and alliances, AMD, brought Ruby back to life, although this wasn’t the first time AMD showed the new Ruby demo. This is all part of AMD gaming evolved initiative, kind of a counterpart of The way it’s meant to be played.

This is something that gamers wanted and we heard from Colette LaForce, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, that it was time to bring Ruby back. We cannot agree more as this use to be a fun part that kind of disappeared from AMD after the ATI acquisition. AMD tends to be somewhat conservative when it comes to marketing, but events such as the Hawaii launch for Hawaii kind of show us a new fresh start for PC gaming and graphics industry. It’s on baby, and Nvidia’s won’t stay cold hearted after AMD’s reinvented big event approach.

Ritchie also mentioned Battlefield 4 and that AMD and DICE have collaborated and showcased this game a few times, on AMD hardware. Battlefield 4 brings Frostbyte 3 engine optimized for Graphics Core Next with dynamic environments, superior character animations and tile based deferred rendering. Battlefield 4 supports DX 11.2, AMD Eyefinity and it is coming soon, including an exclusive bundle for BF4 R9 290X card.

AMD mentioned Murdered, Lichdoom as the next generation games and great showcase for CryEngine 3.

Star Citizen is also something the AMD dev relations team was eager to mention. It comes from the creator or Wing Commander. Designer Chris Roberts said that this is a AAA spaceship shooter. Since it is crowd-founded and got 19.9 USD million, they are ready to show it to off to 250,000 people who made the pledge to support this exciting title.

The game is not fully functional yet, but even the demo of baby Start Citizen looks very impressive, with a full engine and limited functionality to see the ships, play around, explore the universe. The smallest ship in the game has 300,000 polygons, while the biggest one has 1.5 million.